#JUST just made the cohost and pillowfort accounts

[arcadechan]

ok just putting it out there

i don't intend on abandoning tumblr just yet, but man. man !! you can find me other places.

bluesky || pillowfort || cohost || patreon || cara

(ಽ ͡ಥ ͜ʖ ಥ)ಽ

[mrnnki]

I wanna condense to a single blog so badly but I have so much stuff across all of my blogs that It Would Not Go Well

[ask-cueball]

Lil status update, the next post IS being drawn currently! I was on a trip out of state for 3 weeks and it made it difficult to work on anything, let alone this comic, but I'm home and settled now so I'm more capable of working on things.

I mostly wanted to just make this post saying that the Cohost I was setting up for Ask Cueball is now unfortunately cancelled, as Cohost announced earlier this month that they will be shutting down by the end of the year. I am still looking at alternative options, including Pillowfort, as well as possibly setting something up on a Neocities when I have the time to fiddle with all that code. But until then, this Tumblr account is still the only place to read Ask Cueball. Anywhere else is a repost, and is NOT approved by me in any way.

[dross-the-fish]

If you do leave tumblr where can we find you?

For now I'm not going anywhere but as for the future?

I don't know yet, honestly I may just limit myself to hanging out with my friends on Discord. It seems like it's pretty unavoidable that if art or writing is posted anywhere on the internet it's going to be used to train AI, if not today then likely in the future, and there's not much we can do about it. I also know that a lot of the anger I feel about it is pretty irrational and comes from a petty place. There's a tendency for people online and IRL to like my work but ultimately treat it like disposable content because that's the current culture around any kind of media sharing, the consumerist attitude towards art, film and writing these days has made me pretty weary. Knowing that what I make could be used to train an unfeeling machine to pump out content that is more technically impressive but meaningless and there will be people out there who think that's a good thing just leaves me feeling bitter about the whole landscape of social media. I've heard so many defenses of AI "oh it's a tool for people who can't draw to make art!" and "Everyone should be able to get art! Especially those of us who are poor and can't afford commissions" The art I make isn't really valuable to anyone by myself, and never will be, but something about knowing being an artist is no longer valuable to masses of people and possibly never really was is such a bleak feeling. Especially seeing how much AI is winning and how there are AI blogs and Instagram accounts with thousands of followers who don't want anything out of art except "cool imagery" Tumblr was already the last place where I felt like I got actual engagement with people who were curious about my characters and who actually seemed to enjoy the things I created. I felt like I was sharing something, but increasingly that feeling has begun to fade. Tumblr keeps trying to be like other sites like twitter and instagram and this latest development might not drive me off just yet but I feel like it's only a matter of time before I do break up with this hellsite. I've made a cohost here but so far it's pretty dead -> X I have a pillowfort here -> X

[fedoraspooky]

I've been on the lookout for decent platform to jump ship to from Tumblr and so far the most interesting ones I found are Co-host and Unvale. First one is a general blogging platform and second is super art/writing centered platform for developing and showcasing characters/stories, so you might find that interesting! Hope that helps :P

I actually made an account on Cohost a little while back, I'm fedoraspooky there as well! https://cohost.org/fedoraspooky

I'm basically fedoraspooky everywhere except on twitter (trilbyspectre there) and youtube/twitch (phantomspooky on those), if you're not sure if I'm on a site just look up fedoraspooky and chances are you'll find me. :B ; I've been trying to find a backup for tumblr for quite some time because of all the past scares of the site running out of money, etc.

Never thought I'd have to deal with them doing this... But that's what I get for being naive I guess.

That said I hope cohost gets less quiet if more people jump on there following this mess. Pillowfort's also been super quiet outside of groups and stuff... DX

This all just sucks so much, tumblr's been the coziest place for ages and the only place i've been likely to get any kind of replies or people actually seeing my stuff/talking to me, everywhere else I've joined feels like a ghost town... I mean Instagram is close, but they're also pulling their own AI bs. I hate that I have to essentially BURY myself if I don't want my shit being packaged up sold off by people who don't own the rights to it while I'm struggling to even make enough for rent.

[gramophoneturtle]

Back Up Art Archive Update

Last time, I spoke about posting my art to other social media sites - Pillowfort, Bluesky, and had just starting to on cohost.

Well, cohost posted their March Financial Update recently and it's not looking great - potentially running out of funding early April 2024. it could still work out, they've listed plans, but I don't know how finances for running a site are so I can't really comment on their plans. But considering I just started there I'm not inclined to get really invested in it right now. Especially since, skimming their previous financial posts, they said they were doing well. And the tone of the post doesn't help.

(There's more I could go into but let's just leave it there.)

I also found this Tumblr post which talks about this too and links to a mastodon post that I remember coming across before about some issues with cohost. At the time I was also looking at hive I believe since it was another big option and even though I decided on neither of them at the time, I now remember why I didn't bother with cohost after I made my account. It's something to dig into more, I guess (if I can find time for that).

I liked how they handled some things (muffle vs silencing tags and words, allowing you to see automatically see certain content warnings like spoilers for a game, pinning tags to your profile). I think I'm gonna just focus on Pillowfort and Bluesky again as play I catch up on an art archive since Tumblr hasn't been looking so great. Pillowfort financial status isn't the most amazing either but they're way more transparent about it and have a monthly breakdown of their expenses and progress on funding and are against generative AI and other tech crap that's come up over the years. So they get my primary energy for this backup/move.

[fayesdiary]

Hey.

I thought about it further and decided to stay here on Tumblr after all.

This post explains the reasons better than I could but basically amounts to 1) I don't want to lose the community and interactions I made here and making new ones from scratch on other platform is a pain in the ass and 2) What's the point anyway? There's nowhere to run anymore.

So, stuff is going to return mostly as before. However I am still going to have those other socials be at least a little active in case I lose my account here again, and all of my fics and art are going to be external links because I do NOT trust Tumblr not to scrape my stuff even if I told them no.

Still, here are my links for the other platforms, just in case:

Pillowfort

Bluesky

Cohost

Cara

I'm so tired of the modern web.

[qilingxiong]

where else to find me

(in case the sun sets on tumblr)

discord is my first line of communication. mutuals, feel free to ask for my username anytime!

cohost and pillowfort are social platform alternatives i've made accounts for, but am not really active on. if i have to leave tumblr, i don't know yet which one i'll switch to or if i'll migrate to one of them at all, but if you have an account on either of those i'm @/soresus. if we're mutuals, feel free to drop your username into my dms as well :)

to those of you active in chinese fandom, my lofter is @/xiaogeqiling (although i haven't yet posted anything. mostly i just lurk)

if you want to find me anywhere else, you can dm me and ask, and i'll see what i'm comfortable with. however, for the sake of privacy i'm only extending this to mutuals

[unspeakablehorror]

Where to Find Me

Date Created: 7/20/2023 Last Update: 9/1/2023

Edit on 9/1/2023: Added a link to my personal website to the Fanworks section as well, since my fanfic can be found there.

Edit on 8/7/2023: Added a second website that's for archiving fanworks and other stuff I like to 'My Websites'.

EDIT on 7/21/2023: The @ symbol was automatically redirecting (or attempting to redirect) the second part of the pillowfort, dreamwidth, and cohost urls to tumblr accounts, so I got rid of these in all the links.

NOTE: I HAVE STOPPED REGULARLY CHECKING TUMBLR.

The interface of this site has become nearly intolerable for me, and it's become clear to me over the intervening years that Mullenweg is committed to making it progressively worse. So if you've wondered if the reason I've stopped commenting on your posts has anything to do with you, let me assure you, it's not. It's not you. It's not me, either. It's Tumblr. I logged out like maybe a week ago? And it's been amazing? I can live my life again? Miss you all, though.

So anyone who knows me (or has looked through this blog carefully enough) knows I haven't been on here since 2018. But it's been a few years, so now it's time to update my 'Where to Find Me' post! Since there have been several notable changes, and because I wanted to change how this post was structured a bit, it felt easier to me to just make a new post rather than editing the old.

My Websites

Unspeakablehorror's Site - I'll be keeping copies of my fanfic here, recipes, assorted essays, and other things of interest to me here. I will also archive select works from others on this site (with the creator's permission).

New Old Web - This is my website where I talk about how the web is crashing and burning and think about how we can make it not crash and burn. I'm still building it up, but I hope I can add lots more thoughts here.

Main Social Media

I currently feel that I use Pillowfort the most and Dreamwidth the second most. Something my main social media sites both have in common? They don't take venture capital. They're also great for longform writing and conversations.

unspeakablehorror at Pillowfort - Like if Tumblr and LiveJournal had a baby. I love the way this site handles commenting, reblogs, post edits, and privacy. And I love the communities feature. I'm the mod of 3 different Star Wars comms on here: Andor, Sith Empire, and Star Wars-The Sacred Texts.

unspeakablehorror at Dreamwidth - LiveJournal but better. Interface is a bit retro but I absolutely love the tag cloud. Every social media should have tag clouds. Dreamwidth has so many customization features. Also this site has my favorite setup for privacy options. And I love the communities feature on here. I'm the mod of the Sith of Korriban comm here.

Secondary Social Media

unspeakablehorror at Mastodon (fandom.ink instance) - I am on Mastodon, too, which is similar to Twitter with respect to the character count limitations, but has many exciting ideas, like using a protocol for social media that allows accounts on different servers to seamlessly interact with each other (as long as the server isn’t blocked for incompatible rules). It also incorporates the idea of decentralization in a very intriguing way and is entirely non-profit.

unspeakablehorror at cohost.org - Yeah, I'm here too. I don't currently use this account as much, but I do check the site from time to time and I've made a few posts here. I'd be here more often if any of my friends used this platform, but I don't prefer the interface, which is too much like Tumblr for my taste. Basically this is Tumblr if the interface wasn't total garbage, lol. I think I clash with some of the core principles of this site somewhat, and the only way to delete your page is by emailing the site owners, but at least it doesn't have ads or take venture capital. This site is what happens when some furries with coding and design skills are given a bunch of $$$ to make a social media site.

You can also PM me if you want to inquire about other ways to contact me or discuss anything else. I might be a little slow to answer Tumblr PMs, but I'll try to log in from time to time to check for them. Hopefully Tumblr doesn't end up breaking that, too, lol.

Fanworks

I am actually in the process of decentralizing my fic storage! Currently using a combination of social media posts for my oneshots and external storage links to store pdfs and epubs of my longfic. These can be found by examining my 'About me' in my bio on Pillowfort and my profile on Dreamwidth. My eventual goal is to also have my own website to store my fic on.

Unspeakablehorror's Site - I'll be keeping copies of my fanfic here, among other things.

Fanfic on Pillowfort - Access all my fic from Pillowfort!

Fanfic on Dreamwidth - Access all my fic from Dreamwidth!

unspeakablehorror at AO3 - Ah, I hope AO3 can work out their, uh, severe organizational issues, but in the meantime, I'm uncertain how much presence I'm going to have on this site.

unspeakablehorror at ffnet - This site is awful. The ads alone cause me psychological damage. Probably going to have to phase out posting here.

Well, that's all. Time for me to take my leave of this ball pit!

[miyamiwu]

I’ve been updating my Carrd these past days, and it now includes this section:

all accounts are currently empty. I made them just in case Tumblr finally blows up

[syb-la-tortue]

I'm so sorry to hear about your account! Your bonus lore in the tags has long been my favorite thing about following you here. (Unfortunately for my ability to view your art, I had to bail out of Twitter a while back for my own good — and the site is totally unusable without an account now, even following your source links directly. :( )

I hope there is a way to restore your Tumblr without too much additional headache. In case there isn't (or maybe even if there is) and you'd like somewhere you can tag ramble, may I recommend Pillowfort ( https://www.pillowfort.social/ )? It is like a hybrid of Tumblr and LiveJournal, and it's user-funded so it can host adult content without having to appease advertisers. Not only does it support tag rambles and long-form posts, but there's also per-post flagging for adult content — so users can filter without having to rely on tagging conventions.

yeahhh I'm really sad to have lost all the tags and headcanon posts too, I had a backup of my whole blog made just after the first purge but I didn't think of making a new one since, which obviously was a mistake as I shouldn't have felt safe here...

so far I haven't heard back from tumblr support so I really don't hold much hope at this point for getting it back u_u

I got a pillowfort account back in the day (SybLaTortue over there too) but I never really got to use it (everything was still new and messy back then and it didn't feel that safe a place, idk if that changed?) and starting anew somewhere is always rough... would love to hear more opinions about it (and other platforms! Cohost is another that I thought might have potential?), bit like I heard of many creators starting to post over on Bluesky before starting to crosspost there myself, I'm a bit nervous jumping into a new place if I don't see a few familiar names around haha

[theygotlost]

i will still remain here as my primary social media until its physically impossible but all night ive been thinking about what I would do if/when tumblr is gone for real so here are my options:

twitter: probably not. its become a completely unusable wasteland ever since musk bought it and I deleted my account shortly after that. it used to me my other main social media but I can't see myself returning to it any time soon.

cohost/bluesky/pillowfort/some other new twitter alternative: ive never tried these out so idk how I feel about them but I'm thinking of making an account now and testing the waters. even if I do end up liking one of them I sincerely doubt many of my mutuals/followers would end up migrating with me, so there wouldn't really be much point. I would only have like 10 followers

neocities: ive never used this one either but idk how it's supposed to work as a social media. you can make your own website but is there like a feed where you can see other people's posts? I still want to be able to see what everyone else is up to

instagram: i hate instagram so much i really do but I feel like if I overhauled everything and made a new account and changed how i engaged with it it might genuinely be my best option at least for posting art. it's really not even good for posting art (the way i draw a lot of my art is optimized for being formatted on tumblr) but who knows. i currently have an art account there but a lot of irls from school follow it so I have to use my government name and I havent posted anything in over a year so I think the most viable option is to just start over with a new account exclusively for my tumblrinas. posting on instagram removes 1 year of my lifespan though

discord: not a social media website but I will make sure to add all my mutuals who I havent already. just like everyone else Im so bad at maintaining 1 on 1 conversation so I would rarely feel like hitting up anyone in particular and I also hate almost all servers. maybe I could finally cave and make my own mutuals server but i feel like nobody would give a shit

reddit: reddit scares the shit out of me cause i feel like its 90% straight men. there are fandom subreddits but they probably suck. and its not like i can post art there

go offline cold turkey and magically become a normal well adjusted functioning member of society with no mental issues: still waiting for this one to happen.

kill myself: 🤷‍♀️

[jusiri]

Ok so with the recent freak out over Tumblr reducing staff, and everyone talking about new social media to use, why did i not see cohost mentioned

I was looking for something on google and there was a cohost account suggested

and looking at it it looks a lot like tumblr

Has reblogs/tags/tag filtering like

genuinely just looks like a tumblr theme someone made

but no one seems to suggest it and like is it just small or is there something wrong with it, cause like, i feel like most people here would like it and so im just confused lol

Adding in

What is pillowfort????

what are all these things, i don't understand

[lukasagitta]

i've been debating tumblr alternatives lately, though i intend to stay here until the site literally closes.

pillowfort: i made 3 accounts a few years ago and barely touched them. aside from the very low activity and seemingly unsustainable business model, my main issue is the lack of sideblog functionality. inclusion of this feature would likely be years down the line (if the site even still exists at that point) since it's such a low priority for the average user. i don't have much else to say since there's just not enough content for me to engage with.

cohost: still waiting to fully explore this once my account is activated. it has low activity and an equally unsustainable business model, but it DOES have sideblogs ("pages"), it's optimized as a PWA, and it seems to have more promise overall. i don't like the complete lack of metrics but i can respect the philosophy behind that design decision. i'm more concerned about the community guidelines which seem weirdly vague and easily misinterpreted.

mastodon: i've been on there for a while now. my main account's timeline is pretty active, but my horror and ST accounts don't have much to engage with. overall, it's MUCH more sustainable while remaining ad- and algorithm-free by default, has SO many app choices, fosters community-building, promotes open-source software, and actually has some activity.

unfortunately, in my experience, the whole defederation thing often involves incomprehensible conflicts b/w admins that sever connections between completely innocent users who were unfortunate enough to pick the wrong instance. to make matters worse, if you sign up for the wrong instance, you're not immediately aware of any potential defederation--you're just cut off from part of mastodon as if it doesn't exist.

imo, this is the element of mastodon that is the most likely to prevent it from ever thriving, even more than the confusion about needing to pick an instance. "i'd like to stay connected to my friends on here and see all the cool stuff that people have posted on here" shouldn't seem like a pipe dream. the roadmap does include the ability to notify the user whenever a connection is broken through defederation, which would hopefully encourage more thoughtful choices by admins in the future, but idk if that will actually go through.

it's a shame, because i thought the defederation aspect was really appealing at first. however, that was when i assumed it was used as a last-resort only in extreme circumstances.

[makotonaegi]

not that anyone wants to really address this in any way nor can i really articulate this properly but the downward spiral we’ve let happen thanks to reposts and uncrediting artists has led to them creating discord servers for them to post a flow of their art. guys. this is such a disgrace that we’ve all helped lend a hand into having previously stapled and hailed platforms for artists to no longer feel comfortable posting on these social based sites, and yes, while i understand sometimes they’re rescaled and warped a little depending on what the platform wanted to do at the moment..

we’ve lost so many people that used to post to either both tumblr and twitter and all these microplatforms aren’t sticking. they’re good as a second spot to store media should someone want to curate a gallery where you can have the full res, or etc but the publicity that an artist needed to grow is no longer there for people who are starting off. this is primary for just image uploading by the way.

i don’t want to have to make a vlog post on tiktok to share that i made a drawing. i don’t need to make a whole ensamble if my intent was only to make an image.

with artists making servers, it is a great way to streamline commissions, and potentially bridge that gap that you might think the person behind the art is a huge entity, and so on, but they do not get publicity, they cannot get any traction since it is a closed circle.

discord servers are also so fragile in the way that the delete button is always there. the artist can always get rid of the entire server whenever. i know it is the same thing for any account on a platform, but i find that accessing that button on discord is a lot easier and might be stressful since it cannot prove as a good archive. meanwhile, on tumblr, your reblog can serve as a snapshot of that post. discord doesn’t necessarily have any means to do that unless you’ve gone out of your way to save every little thing.

you can recommend all the same secondary platforms that have been trying to replicate the other ones i’ve mentioned, say for example i guess pillowfort,bluesky,cohost, i don’t know all of them but they are not people’s first platform of choice to enter and spend more time on to discover new content.

when you see a budding artist on here, or twitter, or anywhere else, what needs to change is the behaviors because we’ve been doing a lot of standing away and silently saving the art instead of interacting and sharing. and the obvious, if you must see someone else’s art on a different platform, you should ask first if they have an account, and if NOT, then ask permission for reposting with credit back to their pages. even nicer, tack on to leave a nice like or anything on that original page.

this is a mess of a post. whatever.

edit: instagram or Threads is NOT being mentioned because i am not using a facebook product. thanks.

[gible-love-nibles-archive]

(Pinned Post)

I'm gonna be taking a break from here guys. I'll still be checking in here and seeing your guys' things (hover around and scope out the waters, so to speak). I'm not deleting or anything, I'm just gonna step away from Tumblr for now.

I really hate that it's gotten to this point. I've been on here for years!! I've made great friends on here! But this stuff is pushing me past my breaking point. It just feels so uncomfortable to be here nowadays.

My Discord username's claretheutterwalnut; just let me know who it is through a DM or smth so I can accept. I have a Cohost and Pillowfort if you've got accounts there, and I'll try and start a Neocities site if I can get coding figured out.

Thank you all so much for the support, fun, and love these past few years. I want to come back if this site doesn't burn itself to the ground, but if it doesn't... I hope we can still stay in touch somehow. I think that's it from me.

Goodbye for now.